Fully functioning human intestine grown in mouse

Soon you’ll be able to grow your own gut. Take a small sample of human intestine, grind it up and soak it in a digestive enzyme solution, pipette the mixture onto a polymer scaffold and implant it into the abdominal cavity of a mouse. A few weeks later, you’ll have a tiny segment of fully functioning human gut.

Her team’s latest work is the most promising sign yet that the goal is achievable. Four weeks after transplanting scaffolds seeded with human gut tissue into mice, Grikscheit and her colleagues found the transplants had grown many of the features typical of the human small intestine. These included mucus-packed goblet cells and the specialised cells that release gastrointestinal hormones. What’s more, the transplants behaved like the real thing&colon; they could break down complex sugars into simple glucose.

Advertisement

The work in mice is a crucial step in the lead-up to treatments for babies, says Grikscheit. “We’re going to have to have all the supporting data so we can look that family right in the eye and honestly say we’ve done as much research as possible,” she says.

“Having a surrogate system in which you can prove the tissue grows properly is important.” The next step is to produce larger samples of engineered tissue. “Every time you scale things up – from, say, a mouse to the size of a human baby – then you need to have different conditions. We’re working on that right now.”